AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a think-tank organisation long regarded as neoconservative headquarters, recently launched a website dedicated to demonising the Islamic Republic of Iran. The site, called ‘Irantracker’, besides being clearly set up to propagandise Iran, tells one a lot about the neoconservative agenda which, in turn – and far more importantly – reveals even more about the agenda of the Zionists of Israel, to whom the neoconservatives are subservient to, and their intentions toward Iran.

Israeli extreme right-wing Zionist and current Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has had a long and close relationship with the AEI and it is no coincidence that the ‘Irantracker’ site was set up at around the time that it was beginning to look like Netanyahu was going to get up as Prime Minister prior to the recent Israeli elections.

The main thrust of ‘Irantracker’ is, of course, it’s propagandising of Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program. It writes for example:

“In defiance of multiple sanctions programs and in violation of its nuclear non-proliferation treaty obligations, Iran continues to develop and perfect technologies that would allow it to possess a nuclear weapons capability. This section examines the critical issues that Iran’s illicit nuclear program presents: the types and progress of programs; the sources of Iran’s nuclear and weapons technology; critical nuclear facilities; and the development of missile delivery systems.”

The lie is in the neoconservative’s accusation that Iran is in violation of its non-proliferation treaty (NPT) obligations. If Iran had a nuclear weapons program then, yes, it would be in violation of its NPT obligations. However, despite the neoconservative’s best efforts to tell its readership otherwise, there is not a skerrick of evidence to even suggest, let alone prove, that Iran has any nuclear weapons program.

The neoconservative’s base their accusations solely on the fact that Iran has made it difficult in the past for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to verify Iran’s claims that it is only producing low enriched uranium for the purposes of generating electricity which they are perfectly entitled to do. The neocons and the Israelis argue that this uranium can then be enriched further to produce the highly enriched uranium need to build a bomb. The main reason why the Iranians are so reluctant to allow full-on constant inspections is because they see it as an intrusion upon their integrity and simply a deliberate attempt by the Israelis and their neoconservative minions to propagandise the demonisation of Iran. In the past Iran has allowed full inspections but has baulked at further inspections simply because they have been demanded by Israel via the UN. Iran is also annoyed that the world has demanded that Iran prove that it is not doing anything beyond that which it claims while the world ignores entirely Israel’s vast nuclear weapons arsenal simply because it is not a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Of course, the neocon’s propaganda about Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program revolves around the threat a nuclear armed Iran would pose to Israel. The fact is, however, that Israel is actually more of a threat to Iran than ever Iran is a threat to Israel. Not only does Israel have a massive arsenal of nuclear arms but has also hinted that it is quite prepared to use them.

So, the question that remains is: Why does Israel see Iran as such a threat to it that it is prepared to destroy it and why does Israel and their neoconservative allies go to such lengths to demonise Iran with lies, innuendo and inference?

The reason why Israeli Zionists and their neoconservative minions have gone to such lengths to demonise and propagandise Iran is because they need to paint a picture of an evil Iran to present to the world to justify an eventual attack on Iran. In other words, they are trying to build a fake casus belli for such an attack.

The real reason Israel wants to attack Iran is not because Iran has a nuclear weapons program – Israel knows full well that Iran doesn’t – but to affect regime change there. Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program is merely an excuse for such an attack. When the attack does come, while Iran’s nuclear facilities will be targeted to maintain the illusion that they are indeed all Israel is after, Iran’s governmental institutions, particularly the military, will also be hit extensively on the pretext of preventing an Iranian retaliation against Israel.

The bottom line is this: Israel needs to neutralise Iran’s potency so that it is no longer able to support Syria, Hezbollah in south Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza. Without Iranian support Israel believes that Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas will no longer be able to resist Israel. Israel will use its war against Iran as an excuse to attack Hezbollah and Hamas as well as Syria. Israel has made it clear that, because of Hezbollah’s influence within the Lebanese government, Israel will have no compunction about going to war against Lebanon as a nation rather than just Hezbollah thus providing them with the opportunity of occupying at least south Lebanon up to the Litani River. Such a war would also mean that Syria can forget any talk about getting the Golan Heights back and Hamas in the Gaza without support from Iran or Hezbollah, will simply collapse, as would all Palestinian resistance in the Gaza and the West Bank which would be completely occupied by the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority disbanded. The resulting exodus of Palestinians from these areas into Jordan and the Sinai will not be stopped by the Israelis.

And thus the neoconservatives in the American Enterprise Institute will have played their supporting role by demonising the Islamic Republic of Iran in order to set the ball rolling toward the destruction of Palestine.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister, Moshe Ya’alon has told ‘The Jerusalem Post’ that, without ‘benchmarks’, US discussions with Iran over its nuclear weapons program will be pointless.

The reality is; since Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program, any discussion about it would indeed be pointless.

The intent behind this continued propaganda is transparent. Ya’alon’s remarks are designed specifically to reinforce, purely for propaganda purposes, the notion that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. It is stated as a given fact that the world should believe without question and that it is not up to the Western world led by the US to actually prove that Iran has a nuclear weapons program but simply to get Iran by any means necessary to halt its nuclear weapons program. All this is despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever of Iran having any nuclear weapons program at all.

Now, however, Ya’alon is raising the stakes. Not only is he now demanding that if the US is going to talk with Iran about its so-called nuclear weapons program, then it must set ‘benchmarks’ within timeframes. Ya’alon even suggests the timeframe suggesting that “they [the Iranians] have two months to stop the enrichment”. Then, putting the onus on the West to do the Zionists dirty work, he says, “The West has to understand that it needs to confront the Iranians”.

So, first Ya’alon says; ‘trust us, the Iranians have got a nuclear weapons program’, and then says; ‘What are you, the rest of the world, going to do about it?’

Up until recently, there seems to have been no real rush for Israel to confront Iran. Israel under Olmert had bided its time waiting for just the right circumstances to emerge to launch their final confrontation with Iran. Under Olmert the Israelis seemed content to covertly massage and manipulate events in such a way as to make it seem that when the final confrontation did come it would be as a result of Arab aggression against Israel backed by Iranian subterfuge that gave Israel no alternative but to deal with Iran. However, Olmert’s inability to provoke his enemies into providing the desired scenario needed for a confrontation with Iran had infuriated the hardline Zionists who, under Netanyahu, seem to be far more impatient especially now that it doesn’t have the more war-like support of the Bush administration.

Ya’alon remarks make the Zionist position clear. There will be no Palestinian state as far as they are concerned. There will be no withdrawal to the 1967 lines. There will be no withdrawal of the settlements from the West Bank. There will be no right of return for refugee Palestinians or their descendents. There will be no let-up in the siege against Hamas and the Gaza. There will be no withdrawal from the Golan Heights and Hezbollah remain a thorn in the side of Israeli aspirations for south Lebanon and the waters of the Litani River. For the Israelis, Iran is the barrier to everything the Israeli Zionists aspire to.

Up until recently the Israelis have through clever propaganda and misuse of their own past history managed to retain the sympathy of a Western world that believed they were always the victims. Now, though, the Zionists have exposed themselves for what they really are and more and more people around the world are beginning to see it for themselves – and the Zionists know it. Hence the desperation.

The Zionists need their final confrontation now before the world demands an end to the racist apartheid Jews-only state of Israel and the creation of a state where Jews and Arabs live as one in a single bi-national multicultural state.

Ya’alon says Iran should be given just two months to give up something it has every right under international law to do. After the two months are up Ya’alon’s next demands are predictable; sanctions won’t work, the West needs to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities now and, while it’s at it, it should also destroy the Iranian defence and bring about regime change.

Only then will the Israeli Zionists be able to realise their dreams of a Greater Israel.

For all the talk of making peace and setting things right after the tumultuous Bush years, the bottom line is; the Middle East is no better off than it was under Bush and it seems like Central Asia is actually going to be worse off than it was under Bush especially as the war has now been expanded, under Obama, to include Pakistan.

No, Obama isn’t confused. Yes, he is two-faced in as much that he says one thing knowing full well that he intends to do something else and, yes, he’s doing this in order to keep everyone happy. Problem is though, it’s far too transparent. The war in Afghanistan is about to expand rapidly and the Middle East is likely to blow particularly if Israel under Netanyahu attacks Iran. And, despite Obama’s waffle about warning Israel not to attack Iran, you just know that the US military in the region is ready to give support to Israel just as soon as Netanyahu launches the initial attacks.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

White supremacist neo-nazi group ‘Stormfront’ hero Andrew Bolt, who, by at least one account, has always been a racist even when at school where he referred to Aborigines as ‘Boongs’ and ‘Abbos’, is now by inference arguing that Rudd had lured the latest batch of boat people to what proved ultimately to be the death of some of them because Rudd had scrapped John Howard’s blatantly racist Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) program. According to Bolt’s twisted logic, the scrapping of the TPVs was an open invitation to those wishing to seek refugee status in Australia should continue to do so.

Bolt, as well as others, thinks these people are ‘illegal immigrants’, but are they? Surely coming by boat as they do without visas seeking refugee status makes them, well… refugees. Illegal immigrants are those that have come to Australia with the intention of coming here to live but arrived here by pretending to be something they are not – like tourists. At least so-called ‘boatpeople’ have no pretensions about who they are. Of course, if they happen to be white Zimbabwean farmers tossed off theirs farms there’s no problem getting settled into Australia – even for those that arrive here on tourist visas – all they have to do is get in touch with the local Farmers Federation office on arrival and they’ll handle the rest. But if you arrive here as a very desperate and genuine refugee from Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever on a leaky boat then don’t expect any sympathy from the likes of leftover White Australia racist loonies like Andrew Bolt.

Freedom of speech is one thing but to abuse it in order to peddle Howardesque Nazi-like racist propaganda is something else. Even Murdoch should realise that this revolting and blatant racist brings nothing but disrepute to Australia in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Monday, April 20, 2009

The UN Durban Review Conference, billed as a ‘World Conference against Racism, Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance’, due to begin in Geneva on 20 April, is shaping up to be one that exposes who exactly the worlds most racist nations actually are – by them being conspicuous by their absence.Naturally, Israel will not be there. Nor will the US be there. Nor Canada. And now it looks like Australia may not be there either. As one Ha’aretz reader points out; “What do the U.S., Canada, Australia and Israel all have in common? All were created through ethnic cleansing and apartheid. No wonder they all stick together.”

It will come as no surprise to learn that other countries that have threatened to also boycott the conference include the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, France and, with the irony noted, Germany; all nations that over the past few centuries have demonstrated their own propensity to establish racially orientated empires. And, of course, all of them are now supporters of the racist Jews-only apartheid state of Zionist Israel.

UPDATEIt now seems the UK will be attending the conference.

Update 2Iranian President Ahmadinejad stands up to speak and a whole load of Western diplomats get up and leave.

Should have seen that coming!

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Thursday, April 16, 2009

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates has been reported as having ‘warned Israel against attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities’.

His remarks are deceitful. The US is fully aware, despite the continuing propaganda and rhetoric to the contrary, that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. Same goes for Israel. Gates is deliberately playing to a world-wide audience in an effort to bring world public opinion about America, ruined by the Bush era, back into favour by demonstrating to the world that it is trying to act as the world’s peacemakers in the Middle East by using its influence to stop Israel from attacking Iran.

It’s deceitful for two reasons; first, despite knowing that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, Gates continues the rhetoric that it has but that it can be stopped by diplomacy. Secondly, it’s deceitful because he won’t tell the world that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. This is classic ‘good cop-bad cop’ stuff whereby the US makes out it’s holding back the bad cop of Israel hinting that, if Iran doesn’t come clean, he’ll not be able to hold back the bad cop even though he’s warned the bad cop not to do anything rash. The reality, however, is that if the bad cop does rough on Iran and Iran fights back, then the good cop will have no choice but to side with the bad cop.

Gate’s remarks are just another carefully thought out ruse to lull the Iranians into a false sense of security while, at the same time, trying to make the rest of the world think America’s not so warlike after all when it comes to Iran.

The fact is, the US will not actually do anything to stop the Israelis from attacking Iran despite the ‘warning’, and when Israel does attack Iran then Israel will be relying on the US to bomb the Iranians into submission.

This is not about Iran’s ‘nuclear weapons program’, it is about regime change.

How the Howard government attempted to get Australians on board for war against Iraq.

Some ten days ago a former Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) officer, James Sievers, appeared in a Canberra, Australia, court to answer charges that he had copied secret intelligence documents and had them posted to ‘The Australian’ newspaper. The documents were about warnings during the period leading up to the 12 October 2002 Bali bombings that terrorists in Indonesia were planning attacks on ‘sin spots’.

The bombings killed 202 people including 88 Australians. At the time, Brian Deegan, the father of one of the Australian victims, a lawyer and magistrate in Adelaide, Australia, insisted that the then Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, knew of the terrorist threat but had failed to warn Australian tourists. Downer denied that he had received any warning about threats to Bali. Later, Downer’s spokesman chose his words carefully saying there had been no specific warning about the Bali attacks. An inquiry by Australian Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence Bill Blick white-washed accusations against the Howard government that there had been clear warnings of an impending attack and that Downer had failed to provide adequate warning.

The reality was that Downer had been briefed personally on 18 and 19 June 2002 by officers from Australia’s Office of National Assessments (ONA) and was told specifically that Bali and Singapore were ‘attractive targets for the al-Qaeda linked Jamaah Islamiah terrorist network’ and just two weeks prior to the bombing was warned by US intelligence services that there was a threat specifically to Bali. There was even specific travel warnings posted by US authorities that were not repeated on Downer’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) travel warning website.

The evidence is clear: Downer and Australian Prime Minister John Howard were very much aware of the imminent threat to foreign tourist hotspots in Bali prior to the bombings but failed to provide any warning. The question that remains to answered is simple; why did they tell Australian tourists in Bali of the threat and danger of being there?

Prior to the Bali bombings there had been a mounting popular movement in Australia, as well as around the world, against Howard taking Australia to war against Iraq. Just the weekend before the Bali bombings there had been a series of anti-war marches and demonstrations across Australia as there had been all over the world. There had even been a protest at the US spy site in out-back Australia at Pine Gap. Howard, despite his denials, had already wholeheartedly committed Australia to Bush’s war against Iraq and was desperate to have some event to turn tide of dissent against him; the Bali bombings would have been, at least he might have hoped, just such an event. As it turned out, the Bali bombings, rather than galvanise the people of Australia to support Howard’s march to war, had the opposite effect; the Australian people saw the Bali bombings more as some kind of retribution for blindly following the US than a call to join Bush’s fight against Iraq.

At the time, Howard responded by saying that the Bali bombings was in response to Australia’s intervention in East Timor adding that it couldn’t have been because of Australia’s commitment to the US lead-up to the war against Iraq because, so he said, at that time he’d not yet made such a commitment. Of course, all Australians – and, indeed, the Bali bombers – knew that he had.

The evidence, at the moment, is only circumstantial but there is no doubt that Downer and Howard knew of an impending attack against Bali tourist hotspots frequented by Australian’s, particularly at that time of year when many sport and social clubs took time out in Bali to have some end of season fun, yet did nothing to warn Australian’s about the danger. There is also no doubt that a terrorist attack on Australian’s would have been viewed by Howard as being in his interests with regard to his alliance and commitment to George W. Bush’s upcoming war against Iraq for which he would want to have the support of Australian public opinion. At the time, Australian public opinion was running strongly against Howard taking Australia to war against Iraq; the Bali bombing would have been seen as an event that might well turn Australian public opinion in Howard’s favour. As it transpired he was wrong but he could not have known at the time that his ploy was likely to backfire on him.

While the circumstantial evidence is still only that, it is, nonetheless, becoming increasingly compelling as more and more evidence emerges. It can only be hoped that eventually when the truth is finally revealed that Howard and Downer and those others involved will answer for their crimes.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Recently there have been reports of a Hezbollah ‘terrorist ring’ operating in Egypt. At first it was reported that Hezbollah agents were looking for Israeli and other foreign targets in the Sinai. Today, however, the accusations have been added to; they now say that the Hezbollah operatives were also planning other attacks “against targets in the Suez Canal”. The Ha’aretz report names a trio of senior Hezbollah intelligence men that report to an Iranian general in Lebanon. Ha’aretz also puts a name to the head of the Hezbollah ‘terrorist ring’ in Egypt.

One needs to wonder about the source of these reports which Ha’aretz says is the CIA and Israel’s Mossad. One then needs to wonder also why Hezbollah, who are desperately trying to avoid conflict with an Israel that is now led by an extreme right-wing Zionist intent on Hezbollah’s destruction, would want to provoke both Israel and Egypt in this way. As Zvi Mazel writes in the ‘Jerusalem Post’: “Many Egyptians can't bring themselves to believe that Hizbullah was running agents and planning terror attacks in their country. Most Arab countries couldn't believe it, either, though they have offered no reaction. They are still trying to come to terms with the new situation.”

And why should anyone believe it? While Hezbollah may well attack Israel as a defence against Israeli aggression against Lebanon, there is no reason why Hezbollah would want to go deliberately looking for trouble with Israel by attacking Israeli targets outside of Israel and certainly not against a fellow Arab nation whose people actually are sympathetic toward the causes of those that are resisting Israel’s aggression both in Palestine and in Lebanon.

One reason why Israel and its allies would want to create animosity between the Egyptians and Hezbollah is to extend that animosity against Iran as Israeli President Shimon Peres accuses Iran of ‘wanting to take over the Middle East’ and gears up to find casus belli for war against Iran.

And the ‘wedging’ isn’t confined to Egypt and Iran via Hezbollah; Israel has also been attempting to demonstrate to the rest of the Arab world, the majority of whom are Sunni while Hezbollah and Iran are predominately Shi’ite, that Hezbollah are acting against them as well. The idea here is fairly transparent inasmuch that Hezbollah has a close relationship with Hamas in the Gaza which is Sunni demonstrating clearly that there is actually very little animosity between Sunni and Shia despite Israel and their allies best efforts to ‘wedge’ the two groupings. The attempts by Israel to ‘wedge’ Sunni and Shia by pitting Hezbollah against Arab nations is just another branch in the Israeli propaganda road toward their final confrontation with Iran.

Thursday, April 09, 2009

As the end of the Bush Presidency finally drew into sight in the run up to the 2008 US Presidential election, the entire world – not just the American people – but the entire world pinned their hopes on a Barack Obama win, a win that would at last bring some peace to a world turned upside down by Bush and his Zionist-inspired neocon administration.

Now, it seems, those hopes have been dashed.

Sure, he’s made all the right noises and, as a result, his popularity remains high as he continues to make the right noises. But mixed in with what seems to be the right noises is the geo-political realities of an expanding war in Afghanistan, a continued occupation in Iraq despite the nonsensical rhetoric about ‘withdrawal of combat troops’, continued talk of an ‘Iran seeking nuclear weapons’, and of course, the continued support of an expansionist Israel led by an ultra-right wing Zionist who has ruled out any notion of a Palestinian state and which has sworn to destroy Hamas and Hezbollah and put an end to ‘Irans nuclear weapons program’.

The rhetoric of talk is easy, but without backing it up by accepting that the basic premise for threats and war were wrong, such talk is meaningless.

Obama wants to talk about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. What’s to talk about? Iran has said it has no nuclear weapons program and there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that it has, so why talk? To insist that they talk about something that doesn’t exist is merely to play for time before resorting to more threats of sanctions and war. Nothing has really changed.

The same applies to a certain extent to the war in Afghanistan. The war there is completely unwinable, yet Obama is going to shift more troops in to expand the fighting. Not only that, but he’s going to expand the war into Pakistan as well creating even more enemies for the US. The Pakistani government might be happy to take their thirteen pieces of silver from the American government to let them bomb the North West Frontier but the vast majority of Pakistanis aren’t at all happy about it.

It’s slowly becoming apparent that the only difference between Obama and Bush is the rhetoric but very little else. Slowly this is dawning on a disillusioned world and American people.

Why on earth would Iran lose sleep over whether or not America builds an anti-missile shield in Europe? First, Iran, contrary to the propaganda and rhetoric of Israel, the US and their Western allies, is not building any nuclear weapons and nor is their any evidence to suggest that it is; second, Iran has no means of delivering a weapon even if it had one (building a bomb is one thing, building it small enough to be a payload atop any of Iran’s missiles is something else); third, why would Iran want to launch any missile, nuclear armed or otherwise, at any European country? And finally, why would Russia help Iran build a nuclear plant if it thought Iran was going to build nuclear weapons? A nuclear armed Iran is not in Russia’s interest and less than anyone else’s.

Why should Iran care about an anti-missile shield in Europe? It will never be used on Iran’s account, so why is Obama’s threat to go ahead with building it if Iran doesn’t stop enriching uranium for its power generation program going to be of any interest to Iran?

Or is it just all part of the propaganda and rhetoric against Iran? If it is, and Iran goes on enriching uranium as is its right to do, then it’s going to be an expensive exercise for the already hard pressed American taxpayer. The Iranians have absolutely nothing to lose by calling Obama’s bluff.

But, of course, it’s more than just a simple bluffing game isn’t it –especially when the anti-missile shield is on Russia’s doorstep.

This is Israeli propaganda that is getting very desperate – and one has to wonder why.

The inference is that Hamas are interested in smuggling into the Gaza the Iranian missile known as the Fajr. Since it is too complex to breakdown and reassemble, the Israelis want us to believe that it will be smuggled in while fully assembled. The Israelis go on to say that special tunnels are being dug between the Sinai and the Gaza within the so-called Philadelphia Corridor, a 4 kilometre strip of land separating the Gaza from the Sinai, in order to cater for the giant missile.

Of course, the biggest problem for Hamas is not so much getting the missile through the tunnel – that would be a feat in itself but not altogether insurmountable – but how to get a rocket over 10 metres long fully fuelled and ready to go across the Sinai, sneak it past the Egyptian authorities into the Philly corridor and then down a massive tunnel while it is all in one piece. None of this is explained by the Israelis. One imagines that they hope no one would ask; after all, this nonsense is aimed at people who are far more interested in how they’re going to meet their next mortgage repayment or if they’ll have a job to turn up to next Monday.

The story doesn’t explain either why the Iranians would attempt to range their rockets against Israel via Hamas in the Gaza when it would be far simpler and less riskier to transport them by sea to Lebanon where they could easily be unloaded and transported to firing locations much closer to the Israeli heartland. Or maybe that’s going to be the next propaganda storyline to be used as the Israelis ratchet up the ante for war against Hezbollah later.

Overall, the story when viewed with a critical and analytical eye is a complete nonsense, but the important question is; why are the Israelis resorting to this kind of desperate fearmongering?

The report comes after claims that Israel had destroyed an arms convey in the Sudan recently that was in transit to the Gaza for Hamas. The Israelis claimed the convey was carrying Iranian-built rockets. This somewhat suspicious story had its detractors even in Israel with Ha’aretz doubting its honesty suggesting the whole story was just ‘an exercise in propaganda’. Transporting large high-value munitions overland through over a thousand miles of unfriendly territory is a hard ask to believe. High-value munitions simply wouldn’t be put at risk in that way.

No. It is clear that Israel is brewing up another ‘lets get Hamas before they get us’ propaganda scenario prior to attempting to finish off the job Olmert attempted to do in the dying days of the Bush regime – destroy Hamas, provoke Hezbollah, draw in Iran, draw in the US, provoke the final confrontation with all of Israel’s enemies. They don’t need the support of world public opinion; they only need the support of Israelis, which they hope to get through fearmongering, and support from the US Obama administration which they’ll get after the fait accompli of Israeli attacks on their enemies.

Time is running out for the Israelis. The call for a bi-national one-state solution is getting louder. Desperation is setting in.

UPDATE ONE

Ha’aretz is reporting that the Israeli Defence forces are planning the largest defence exercise ever undertaken in Israel with “the Home Front Command hoping to convince the population that in a future war the entire country can become a front without warning”.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

For over sixty years the Zionists of Israel and their supporters around the world have played the leaders of the Western world for suckers. While the Israeli Zionists talked of peace with the Palestinians via the ‘Two State Solution’ in which Palestine would have its own state next to Israel, Israel’s actions demonstrated that, far from wanting peace with the Palestinians or allowing a Palestinian state to be created, the Israelis really wanted only to have the lands that belonged to the Palestinians and to the extent that precluded any notion of a real Palestinian state.

Ever since the 1948 Nakba Israel has done nothing but grab as much land from the Palestinian people as possible; it has done nothing else from that day to this sixty-one years later. And yet during that entire time there has always been talk of a Palestinian state – but it has never progressed beyond talk.

With the benefit of over sixty years of history that can now be seen in hindsight, a distinctive pattern has emerged that clearly demonstrates that Israel has over that time maintained a deliberate ruse by which they have offered hope to Palestinians but never anything more and, at the same time, have created for the West and its leaders the illusion that Israel has always been the victim of Palestinian antagonisms and that it has been those antagonisms that have either prevented Israel from accepting a Palestinian state or delayed further talks about it.

The reality is that the Israelis have never themselves actually offered Palestinians a state of their own; it has always been asked for by Western powers and the Israelis have always agreed to talk about it but then have always found a reason later to abandon those talks, usually when some Israeli-provoked violence occurs. This cycle of talks, hopes, then violence and breaking off of talks and then more talks and renewed hopes has been going on for six decades and got nowhere. All the while the insidious expansion of Israel into lands that do not belong to them has been relentless.

Today, however, a turning point has been reached. The Netanyahu government in Israel has stopped beating around the bush over Palestinian statehood and has clearly said there will be no Palestinian state.

If there is to be no Palestinian state, what then is to be the future of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip? Netanyahu is playing for more time while he waits for an opportunity to fulfil his promise of destroying Hamas and Hezbollah; a goal that can only be accomplished after regime change in Iran. Netanyahu’s ruse is to talk of ‘economic partnership’ with the Palestinians. After having spent years destroying what little there was of any Palestinian economy, the Zionists and Netanyahu now cynically extends an economic hand to the Palestinians in exchange for peace on the Zionists terms. (Incidentally, there are no prizes for guessing where this money to help the Palestinians would be coming from nor are there any prizes for guessing which hands the money, if it ever actually happens, will end up falling in to.)

Despite Netanyahu’s blatant insistence that there will be no Palestinian state and despite the glaring sixty year history of Israel’s deliberate equivocation coupled with territorial expansion into Palestinian lands, US President Obama and other Western leaders are just the latest in a long line of successive US Presidents and Western leaders that have laboured under the delusional fantasy that there is still hope for a two-state solution.

Friday, April 03, 2009

With Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing fellow Zionists now in power in Israel the notion of two states, Israel and Palestine living side by side, is now dead.

The reality, however, is that it was never at any stage actually alive. For the most part the idea was merely a ploy to buy more time; indeed, it still is as the US continues to push the idea despite it being made quite clear by Netanyahu and his cohorts that it will not happen.

The fact is; the Israeli Zionists want to have the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and, so they hope, south Lebanon up to the Litani River incorporated into a Greater Israel while the Palestinian people, on the other hand, simply want the lands that were taken from them during the Nakba in 1948, and later, returned to them.

Ever since the Nakba the Israelis have inched their way on to more and more land that was not even given to them by the UN. They have found a myriad of pretexts to attack their Arab neighbours providing themselves with excuses to slowly expand their apartheid empire into Palestinian and Syrian lands by taking three steps forward as they invade and then two steps back to make it seem as though it is they that are making the concessions. This has been their way for more than sixty years now.

They are slowly chewing away at the West Bank, slowly but surely building and enlarging their settlements and confiscating increasingly larger tracts of land to provide Jews-only corridors connecting the settlements. Soon the corridors themselves will be come enlarged and settled and the Palestinians slowly squeezed in to ever diminishing areas that will eventually become overcrowded ghettos. One of two things will then happen; either the frustrated and impoverished Palestinians in the new ghettos will leave to become refugees in Lebanon or Jordon or elsewhere, which is what the Zionist want, or they will turn on the Israelis, just as the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip ghetto have done, in a fight that they will unlikely be able to win.

The Palestinians, despite sixty years of oppression and occasionally having the whole world ranged against them through clever manipulation of the world press, have proven to be a tenacious people who will not give up easily that which is theirs nor walk away from those that have taken away that which is theirs.

Only now, at last, does it seem that the world is seeing what the Israeli end-game really is. All the talk of peace has been just that – talk. Nothing whatsoever has come of any of the ‘talks’; indeed, all the while that there have been talks the Palestinians have only ever seen their lands, their rights and their means of surviving diminish further still. Israel’s slaughter against a virtually unarmed people in the Gaza Strip has finally demonstrated to the world all too clearly Israel’s true colours and intentions, and now with Netanyahu clearly telling the world there will be no Palestinian state, the Palestinian people and their plight are being seen in a totally different light.

The Palestinian people now desperately need the support of the peoples of the world in order to lobby the world’s governments and the UN to finally demand an end to the apartheid racist state of Israel and to create one state that incorporates the West Bank and the Gaza Strip where Arabs and Jews live as one in a bi-national single truly democratic and secular state, and with the Golan Heights being returned to Syria.

The fear, of course, for the Israelis is that they will lose their dominance over the Arabs. Ultimately, however, they should have no real reason to complain – the process is called democracy which the Israelis have been telling the world for the last sixty years is what the entire Middle East should be like.

The UN must concede that they got it wrong, acting hastily and with much guilt after the events of the Second World War, when they created the racist state of Israel in 1948. Millions have died since as a result of Israel’s creation in this way. It’s time to create a new state where Jews and Arabs, those that want to, can live together.

Thursday, April 02, 2009

The cry seems to be: ‘The neocons are dead; long live the neocons!’, as they reinvent and adjust themselves for a presidency that doesn’t quite reflect the exact same image that the Bush presidency did.

The old grandly named and now all but defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was founded by the staunchly pro-Zionist neoconservatives in early 1997 for the purpose of deposing the Democrat administration of the time (Clinton) and influencing a prospective Republican administration into strongly supporting the cause of right-wing Israeli Zionism by projecting US influence directly into the Middle East on behalf of Israel and ridding Israel of its enemies, Iraq and Iran.

While they partly succeeded in their quest inasmuch that the Democrats lost out in the 2000 Presidential race – albeit by cheating at the polls and using a corrupt court to install a Republican administration – and getting the new compliant administration to attack and invade Iraq at a time when Saddam Hussein was providing support to a desperate Palestinian Intifada, time ran out for the neocons as Bush exhausted his usefulness at the end of his Presidency with the main part of the neocon agenda unfulfilled.

By the end of the Bush era Iran still remained a barrier to Israeli dreams of a Greater Israel that incorporates the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and, so they hope, the south of Lebanon up to the Litani River, because of Iranian support of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Despite two desperate attempts by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to provoke a war against Iran by attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006 and Hamas in the Gaza in 2008/09 in the hope that President Bush would intervene against Iran in the event of Iran intervening against Israel on behalf of Hamas and Hezbollah, the dying Bush administration, seeing that Iran was not going to oblige the Israelis, had no option but stand on the sidelines and watch Israel morally lose two wars with none of their war aims being achieved. Their last attempt at provoking Iran when they mercilessly attacked an almost unarmed Gaza Strip ended almost literally on the dying day of the Bush administration.

With these failures, coupled with a new presidency voted in on the backs of an electorate that was thoroughly sick of the neocon’s and Bush’s endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention a world economy that is on the verge of collapse, the neocons were in dire need of reinventing itself to cope with the new political era.

And reinvent themselves they indeed have attempted to do, though their aims and rhetoric have the same old familiar warmongering ring about them as they had during the Bush years. The recently launched and far less grand-sounding Foreign Policy Initiative headed up by arch-neoconservatives William Kristol and Robert Kagan, has taken a different tack from the old PNAC. In there Mission Statement for the new FPI the neocons renew their old animosities toward those they considered past threats. For them Russia and China are once again a threat to US hegemony and influence in our world. But most notably in their Mission Statement the neocons have made a deliberate attempt to put a little less emphasis on the enemies of the Bush era. Conspicuous by its absence in their Mission Statement is any mention of Israel’s arch enemy, Iran. Neither Iran nor its so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’ get any mention – at least not yet. Of course, the neocons continue to perpetuate the myth of al Qaeda as the ever-threatening and perennial enemy responsible for any non-state military actions against the US, Israel and their allies and there is reference to assorted though unnamed ‘rogue’ and ‘failed’ states leaving the list open to additions as and when required.

Promoting China and Russia once again as ‘threats’ to the US is merely a useful distraction. The threat from China and Russia during the Cold War was grossly exaggerated during that period and both nations are even less a threat today than ever before. The world should not be fooled; the neocons real enemies remain those that oppose Israeli Zionism. Their rhetoric is for a strong America but what is left unsaid is that a strong America means a strong Israel. If the US withdraws into itself to become isolationist again then it will leave Israel exposed. The neocons need to have enemies around the globe and need to project America as a nation ‘indispensable to international peace, security and stability’ in order to protect the future of what they hope will be a Greater Israel dominating the resource rich region of the Middle East.

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About Me

is an Aeronautical Engineer, Historian and general carer of what goes on in the world.
Apart from an earlier career in engineering, Lataan also has a First Class Honours BA degree in History and a PhD in International Politics.
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